such as one sees in Japanese prints, trees flooded.with 43
light, intoxicated, coryphantic trees which must have been
planted by the gods in moments of drunken exaltation.
One should not race along the Sacred Way in a motor car
—it is sacrilege. One should walk, walk as the men of old
walked, and allow one's whole being to become flooded
with light. This is not a Christian highway: it was made
by the feet of devout pagans on their way to initiation at
Eleusis. There is no suffering, no martyrdom, no flagella-
tion of the flesh connected with this processional artery.
Everything here speaks, now, as it did-centuries ago, of
.illumination, of blinding, joyous illumination. Light ac-
quires a transcendental quality: it is not the light of the
Mediterranean alone, it is something more, something
unfathomable, something holy. Here the light penetrates
directly to the soul, opens the doors and windows of the
heart, makes one naked, exposed, isolated in a metaphysi-
cal; bliss* which makes everything dear without being
known. No analysis can go on in this light: here the neu-
rotic is either instantly healed or goes mad. The rocks
themselves are quite mad: they have been lying for cen-
turies, exposed to this divine illumination: they lie very
still and quiet, nestling amid dancing colored shrubs in
a blood-stained soil, but they are mad, I say, and to touch
them is to risk losing one's grip on everything which once
seemed firm, solid and unshakeable. One must glide
. through this gully with extreme caution, naked, alone,
and devoid of all. Christian humbug. One must throw off
two thousand years of ignorance and superstition, of mor-
bid, sickly subterranean living and lying. One must come
to Eleusis stripped of the barnacles which have accumu-
lated from centuries of lying in stagnant waters. At Eleu-
sis one realizes, if never before, that there is no salvation
in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy. At Eleusis
one becomes adapted to the cosmos. Outwardly Eleusis